IBM is working with a select group of pilot customers to develop and test business applications for Linux on S/390. On Thursday it opened its first e-Transactions "think tanks" in New York and France.

The move to bring Linux to the mainframe comes at a time when IBM is continuing to try to build momentum for its message that the good, old mainframe is a very hot e-commerce platform.

IBM is pitching OS/390 Version 2 Release 9 -- the latest release of one of IBM's mainframe OSes, due to begin shipping on Friday -- as an industrial strength e-business system.

When coupled with the highly available, reliable S/390 hardware, IBM says, the platform is tailor-made for demanding commerce applications.

"Customers playing with it (Linux for S/390) are finding interest in running multiple instances of Linux on a single server," said Rich Lechner, vice president of e-business for IBM's Enterprise Systems Group.

"This is very interesting for ASPs (application service providers) and ISPs," Lechner said, as is the capability to run middleware such as the Apache HTTP server right on an IBM mainframe.

Grede Foundries, a Milwaukee producer of manufacturing parts, is test-driving Linux on S/390 inside its business operations centre.

Currently, the company maintains all its central accounting and shipping software and related data on its S/390 mainframe. Its Windows NT-based corporate intranet is linked back to this mainframe, giving employees access to the data.

"When the time is right, we want to move that intranet to the mainframe," said Rich Smrcina, systems software specialist for Grede. "The factor is speed. If Linux and the data can both reside on the mainframe, the data will be able to flow significantly faster."

Smrcina said the Linux platform also brings to the mainframe ready ports of interesting middleware, ranging from Apache to Samba to the Bind DNS server software.

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
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Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.